Earlier this week, I discussed the pending release of a new report by Families USA, a pro-Obamacare activist group, comparing Obamacare to Romney's plan for national health reform. Today, Families USA released the study. It is marred by a number of serious factual and analytical errors, errors that fatally damage the report's credibility.

(DISCLOSURE: I am an outside adviser to the Romney campaign on health care issues. The opinions contained herein are mine alone, and do not necessarily correspond to those of the campaign.)

Families USA makes inaccurate assumptions about Romney's plan

As I anticipated in my earlier post, the Families USA report inaccurately assumes that Romney’s national reforms would take the form of a standard deduction, instead of a universal tax credit. Obamacare expands coverage “through tax credits and [Romney’s plan] through tax deductions,” Families USA claims (emphasis in the original). This is not true: Romney’s plan is agnostic on whether or not to use credits or deductions.

The report details on a state-by-state basis the people who would receive subsidies under Obamacare, but it does not detail the distribution of the $1.2 trillion in tax increases and $716 billion of Medicare cuts on a state-by-state basis. Perhaps Families USA believes that Obamacare was paid for by magic unicorns in the sky.

Obamacare increases premiums relative to Romneycare and prior law

The report's numbers come from Obama adviser and MIT economist Jonathan Gruber. Tellingly, the report does not disclose Gruber’s analysis of the impact that Obamacare would have on insurance premiums, in comparison to the Romney plan.

This is key, because as I noted in my previous post, Gruber’s work has shown that Obamacare would dramatically increase insurance premiums relative to prior law, due to its regulations and mandates that would not be part of Romney’s plan. It’s unclear whether or not the Families USA report accounts for the difference that each plan would have on premiums, prior to the distribution of subsidies.

Furthermore, the Families USA report does not consider the impact on reducing premiums of any of the other significant reforms that Romney proposes, such as: subsidized high-risk pools for people with pre-existing conditions; malpractice litigation reform; and purchasing insurance across state lines.

Families USA's dishonest claims about Obamacare's Medicare cuts

The report makes numerous dishonest claims about Obamacare’s Medicare cuts, such as that they “extend the life” of the program (which they only do if they aren’t double-counted toward Obamacare’s deficit-neutrality); and that the law expands Medicare’s benefits, when in fact it cuts benefits to Medicare Advantage and drives hospitals into bankruptcy, reducing access to care.

Gruber's claims about the uninsured vastly diverge from independent analyses

Bizarrely, the report claims that its invented version of the Romney plan—which more resembles the plan that George W. Bush proposed in 2007—would actually increase the number of people without health insurance, by 11.2 million in 2016. This makes no sense, given that the Bush reform would drive down insurance premiums and allow people outside the employer-sponsored system to gain tax-subsidized insurance.

The Lewin Group, a non-partisan health benefits consultancy, projected that the Bush deduction would expand coverage by 9.2 million, and do so with zero new government spending. A universal tax credit plan would offer universal coverage, thereby expanding coverage even more broadly than Obamacare does. It’s not clear why Families USA’s analysis diverges by 20 million uninsured from Lewin’s.

Obamacare isn't a free lunch

The fundamental flaw in the Families USA report is that it attempts to mislead readers into thinking that Obamacare is a free lunch. It ignores the impact of the law's mandate, tax hikes, and Medicare cuts on individual Americans and on the cost of health insurance. I get that that's how Obamacare's most partisan supporters look at it. But independent-minded people will intuitively understand that Obamacare isn't free.